By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Sep 11 1998 (IPS)

Cuba’s Church has become more visible here following Pope John Paul II’s visit to Cuba in January, which enabled it to emerge from the obscurity to which it had been relegated for more than three decades.

This was borne out this week by a host of open religious events: street processions, a nationwide radio message by the archbishop of Havana, Jaime Ortega, and masses held in packed churches.

“For thirty-eight years we didn’t go out into the streets with our Virgin of Regla,’ said Maria Calidad Martinez, who bore a bouquet of flowers as she accompanied a procession with a small image of the virgin in full regalia.

“We give thanks to the municipal authorities, who permitted the procession,” said a parish priest from a small coastal district in Havana. “God willing we’ll be able to go a bit further next year.”

Devotees of the Virgin of Regla (a small municipality near Havana) gathered on Sep. 7 to pay homage to their saint. Sep. 8 saw the celebration of the Day of Our Lady of the Charity of Copper, who was proclaimed Cuba’s patron saint in 1916 by Pope Benedict XV while her icon was crowned by Pope John Paul II at a mass in Santiago de Cuba, 967 kms east of Havana.

However, each Catholic saint has another identity in the Santeria, a syncretic religion born during slavery out of a mix of Catholicism and West African religions. The Virgin of Regla is Yemaya, Goddess of the sea, while the other name of the Virgin of the Charity of Copper is Oshun.

The Sep. 8 procession extended over 12 blocks near the site of the temple in the old section of Havana where the image of the Virgin of the Charity of Copper is kept. Thousands of devotees followed the procession, which had a large Cuban flag at the front of it, and, as it passed each block, a multitude joined it.

The festivity ended with a mass celebrated by Cardinal Ortega who, hours before, had issued a message to the entire country on radio, an unprecedented act by the Catholic Church since the 1959 revolution.

In his homily, Ortega affirmed that in the past 40 years, the church in Cuba had moved “step by step, with love and perseverance, taking gradual but courageous steps, never violent nor discomforting to anyone, but conciliatory and reconciliatory.”

He said that, in the wake of the Pope’s visit, the street processions and his message on state radio were “indications of a new reality in the Church, in the heart of our people and in the life of the Christian community.”

“There will be other signs, and we must await them without impatience and without anxiety,’ said Ortega, who exhorted all Christians to “take gradual steps, always spreading love in the process”.

In a similar vein of “peace and reconciliation,” the cardinal’s radio message referred to the solace that the church offers to the poor and the humble and the need to “recover the values that enable a nation to take shape, grow, and develop”.

The cardinal defined these values as the “simple but indispensable ones that the family has transmitted to its children from generation to generation and which have to do with virtues like sincerity, honesty, justice, loyalty, and many others that need to be cultivated”.

As part of its pastoral work, Cuba’s Catholic church often expresses its opinions on issues that relate to today’s society. For example, the latest edition of ‘La Palabra Nueva’, a publication of the archdiocese of Havana, included an extensive article criticizing the official position of the state on abortion, legalised in Cuba since the 1959 revolution.

The same edition of ‘La Palabra Nueva’ includes a statement made by Ortega at the Diocesan Assembly in 1998 in which he said that the Christian fight “is not waged against the powers of this world.”

He also clarified statements the Pope made concerning the role of the church during his visit. The Pope did not demand radical and immediate change, but rather the contrary, Ortega said in reference to the pontiff’s suggestion that Christians participate in Cuba’s social, political, and economic life and reclaim the space that ought to be theirs in these areas.

What the pope was saying was that Christians should achieve that space “gradually and with much creativity, realism and moderation” said the cardinal. “Any other appraisal of the situation encourages either inadequate, imprudent and counterproductive activity or inertia and passivity.”

Scholars who follow relations between church and state in Cuba – a relationship not lacking in moments of conflict – see in the words of the Cardinal as a call for dialogue and moderation in the effort by Catholics to carve out their place in and have an influence on Cuban society.

“It is clear that ground has been gained in the last few years, and while various demands by the church remain unanswered – such as access to the media and the education of new generations – the church cannot risk a backlash by the state,” said an expert who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Far from wanting to lose ground, he said, the church hierarchy is confident that it will spread its influence and achieve its goals gradually, over an extended period of time.

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